


The Secret Lives of Super-Spies

by PlotDotOh (TheCheerfulPornographer)



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Identities, Character Study, Disguise, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/PlotDotOh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever Sarah leaves the house, she carries with her a faded denim backpack, but she never opens it or looks inside. Sarah Markov has no knowledge of the backpack’s contents.</p>
<p>They belong to someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret Lives of Super-Spies

Every second Tuesday, Sarah Markov is born. 

She comes into being rather suddenly, over the course of several minutes. The first thing to be born is her body, in its dress.

Sarah Markov always wears a dress, but never the sexy, figure-hugging kind. Her dress is long and loose, and made of faded paisley fabric. It’s the kind of dress that someone might wear if they need to walk quite a bit, but never run. It is comfortable, heavy — what some people might call frumpy.

The next things to be born are her feet, in their shoes. Sarah Markov’s shoes are sensible and flat, scuffed brown oxfords that look 20 years old. They are perfectly broken to her gait, and bear the dust of many long walks down city streets.

After that comes Sarah’s hair. It’s blondish-brown, a nondescript Caucasian color that doesn’t really have a name. Like Sarah, it is nothing worth noting, in-between, pulled back into a clumsy braid from which loose strands are constantly escaping.

Sarah’s face is always the last thing to be born. Fine lines wrinkle the corners of her eyes and her mouth; blue eyeshadow, her one obvious concession to vanity, is applied in exactly the wrong thickness. Then just a pair of gaudy earrings, obviously meant to look artistic, and Sarah is ready to go.

Whenever Sarah leaves the house, she carries with her a faded denim backpack, but she never opens it or looks inside. Sarah Markov has no knowledge of the backpack’s contents.

They belong to someone else.

——-

Every second Tuesday, Sarah Markov is born. After that, she goes to book club.

The reading group is small, only six men and five women, none of them younger than 35. (Sarah herself is 39.) They meet in the dusty basement of a storefront used bookshop, under harsh fluorescent lights. In a crooked circle of chairs they gather twice monthly, to read and discuss classics.

They are veterinarians, programmers, accountants, police officers. One is a schoolteacher, one a stay-at-home mom. They are Sarah’s acquaintances, her peers. 

If asked to describe Sarah Markov, they might say that she often seems kind of sad. 

Sarah says little, but when she does speak, her comments are pointed and incisive. This surprises no one, since Sarah spends her days among books, working as a library assistant at an unspecified branch.

She’s not a proper librarian yet, but they all hope that she gets there someday.

——-

Tonight, they are discussing Tolstoy. The group leader asks Sarah if she has any special insight, given her Russian background. She shrugs and says that she doesn’t really remember Russia, or have amy family that lives there.

She is quieter than normal, for the rest of the discussion.

——-

One time, while walking to the book club, Sarah tripped — she’s always been a little clumsy — and her backpack spilled open in the street. The things inside came tumbling out: sharp things, shiny things, all black and chrome and steel. 

Sarah Markov looked around in a panic and quickly shooed them back inside — moving, for just a second, with an uncommon speed and grace. Fortunately, the street was near deserted. 

Those items don’t belong to Sarah, but she knows they can’t be seen.

——-

After the book club, Andre comes up. ”Are you alright?” he asks. ”You seem a little glum today.”

Andre is a nice man: a radiologist, and an active member of the Episcopalian church. He’s the kind of person who uses words like “glum”, without any sarcasm whatsoever. Every so often, about one meeting out of four, Sarah and Andre go back to his home and have sex. They always do it in the missionary position, in the dark. Sarah’s not quite sure how it began; it’s just a thing that happened. 

She enjoys their sex mostly, despite its vanilla blandness, but tonight when Andre asks if she wants coffee she says no. (Coffee is Andre’s code word for sex, since he would never say _that_ word outright in public.) She shakes her head and pleads a headache, plans to go home and lie down. 

Andre winces in sympathy, and casually rubs her shoulder. The actions of a nice man. Sarah leans into it a little, like it is something new.

She likes Andre a lot. She wishes that she could see him more — but of course, mostly she does not exist.

——-

Sarah Markov walks back alone, and doesn’t look behind herself quite as much as you’d expect someone like her to do.

She walks to a part of town where you would not expect to see her — not because it’s dangerous, but because it seems too rich, too fancy. She stops in front of a tall, tall building, with a great splash of neon scrawled across the top.

One hand shading her face, she looks up at the building for a long moment, without showing any particular expression. She knows that her existence is drawing to a close, and feels a certain subtle melancholy at this fact. Just before she might stand there long enough to be noticed, she audibly sighs, and turns aside.

Her path is a path that only Sarah Markov uses to enter and exit the tall building. She didn’t discover it herself, of course; someone else told her the way. She climbs slowly, with her eyes closed, counting each step. It’s just easy enough that her heavy dress does not obstruct her.

As she climbs, she can feel herself begin to slip away. 

——-

She reaches the room where she goes to be unmade, and quickly bits and pieces of her start to vanish. Her hair is gone, the slight puffiness of her cheeks recedes, the lines on her face start to fade away. The heavy dress is cast off like a snakeskin; what crawls out of it is someone very different indeed.

With her last conscious thought, Sarah Markov sets down her backpack on the bed. 

Someone else opens the clasp, carefully unloads the things inside. Someone else disposes of Sarah’s remains, bundling the dress and shoes and hair into a corner of the closet where no one will ever see. Someone else, someone who’s comfortable with black and steel and chrome, handles the contents of the backpack with ease, but the faded, sagging denim looks ridiculous against her clothes.

Sarah Markov is gone — not dead, but disappeared completely. All that’s left is someone else, someone who wears similar skin but lives in a very different world, who says and does things that Sarah could never comprehend. Someone who might look at Sarah with pity, if not disgust.

In the corner of her closet, bundled up and tossed aside, a small part of Sarah Markov waits to be reborn. 

It will happen, like clockwork, once every other week.


End file.
